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Sports Fans Break Records on Twitter

By Claire Cain Miller June 18, 2010 6:36 pmJune 18, 2010 6:36 pm

Left, Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press; right, Mike Nelson/European Pressphoto AgencySoccer fans wrote a record-breaking 2,940 posts per second in the 30 seconds after Japan scored against Cameroon in a World Cup match on Monday. Their record fell three days later when the Lakers won the N.B.A. championship.

Sports fans have spent the week furtively watching the World Cup during the workday and staying up late to watch the N.B.A. playoffs. They have also been logging on to Twitter.

Despite the serious technical problems that Twitter had during the week, which caused long periods of downtime, three World Cup goals broke the all-time record for the number of Twitter posts written per second, Twitter reported. And those records were quickly shattered Thursday night, after the Lakers won the final game of the N.B.A. playoffs.

People typically write about 65 million Twitter posts a day, according to the company, and about 750 messages per second. But in the 30 seconds after Japan scored against Cameroon on Monday, soccer fans wrote a record 2,940 posts per second. Basketball fans quickly broke that record with 3,085 posts per second after the Lakers’ victory.

In the last few months, the growth in visitors to Twitter’s site has slowed, prompting people to wonder whether the Twitter trend was plateauing.

In fact, people were still using Twitter in increasing numbers, but doing it more from mobile devices and other Twitter apps than from Twitter’s own site. According to comScore, Twitter.com had 90.2 million unique visitors worldwide in May, up from 83.8 million in April and 37.3 million in May of last year.

And sports fans’ activity on Twitter over the last week proves that it is attracting a wider group of users, beyond the tech geeks who initially started using it.

The posts about the World Cup and the N.B.A. playoffs also provide a warning. For anyone recording games to watch later, just as for anyone recording television shows, Twitter is a dangerous place where the suspense could be killed with a single post.